David Singer

Pope Francis has suffered a serious blow to his spiritual and moral authority following the Vatican's recognition of the "State of Palestine" in a new treaty announced on 13 May.

The Vatican's latest slippery slide into political and legal chaos represents a clear breach of clause 11(2) of the 1993 Fundamental Agreement Between The Holy See And The State Of Israel which provides:

"The Holy See, while maintaining in every case the right to exercise its moral and spiritual teaching-office, deems it opportune to recall that owing to its own character, it is solemnly committed to remaining a stranger to all merely temporal conflicts, which principle applies specifically to disputed territories and unsettled borders."

Vatican officials openly admitted that this new treaty did not constitute the Holy See's first breach of the Fundamental Agreement - Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi pointing out:

"We have recognized the State of Palestine ever since it was given recognition by the United Nations and it is already listed as the State of Palestine in our official yearbook,"

This latest challenge to the Pope's spiritual and moral authority - first transgressed by his predecessor Pope Benedict - arises from the fact that the United Nations recognition of the State of Palestine on 29 November 2012 affirmed:

"...the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967..."

Over 600000 Jews presently live in this designated territory. PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas - warmly welcomed by Pope Francis this week as a potential "angel of peace" - has insisted upon their total displacement and removal as a condition of any peace agreement.

Abbas made his racist views very clear in Cairo on 28 July 2010 when he told Wafa - the official Palestinian news agency:

"I'm willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as Nato forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the Nato forces, or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land."

Abbas - Israel's putative "partner for peace " - leads an Organisation that claims the entire territory of former Palestine as another exclusive Arab fiefdom - denying the Jews any political rights in their biblical, ancestral and internationally sanctioned homeland.

Abbas's continuing refusal to recognise Israel as the nation State of the Jewish people has been a major roadblock to the successful conclusion of negotiations between Israel and the PLO.

Pope Francis - like his predecessor Pope Benedict - is apparently prepared to ignore that Abbas and the PLO remain sworn enemies of the Jewish people - pursuing the total elimination of the Jewish State by armed struggle as documented in the 1968 PLO Charter.

The Pope has strayed from the eternal message of the Psalms - the key to the spirituality of the Old Testament and an essential and permanent part of Christian prayer.

Psalm 28 in the New Jerusalem Bible declares:

Do not drag me away with the wicked, with evil-doers, who talk to their partners of peace with treachery in their hearts.

Repay them as their deeds deserve, as befits their treacherous actions; as befits their handiwork repay them, let their deserts fall back on themselves.

They do not comprehend the deeds of G-d, the work of his hands. May he pull them down and not rebuild them!

Pope Francis - like Pope Benedict - has joined the evil-doers to the chagrin of the Jewish people.

Pope Benedict's desert - the birth of Islamic State in 2014 - has seen the wilful killing, forced conversion and wholesale destruction of ancient Christian communities in Iraq and Syria.